Responding to God's challenge to get out of the boat and start walking on water!

Monday, March 13, 2017

Pol-UK

I climbed on the scales at Scottish Slimmers earlier this
evening. It was a good loss. Two hours
later I was eating my way through a bowl of Jaffa cakes! There was no sense of
the restraint I had inflicted on myself all week.

Pol-UK should come with a warning – “Writing poetry can
damage your health”.

It was my first time at Pol-UK, a writing group led by
two Polish sisters which meets every Monday night in the Bike Shed on Grant
Street. The Bike Shed isn’t a bike shed though it might have been one in a
previous incarnation. It’s a community building for all sorts of groups. I had
been in there once before for a Christmas carol singing event.

The group was small and friendly. There was tea, coffee
and Jaffa cakes to see us through an evening of creative writing.

It turned out that I was expected. They had been warned I
might come. A friend had been there last week and told them that I planned to
come. It appears that I am a known entity in the creative writing circles of
Inverness.

We talked books for a while. We all seemed to be published authors
– although they had managed to break into the “Waterstones” market where despite
many meetings with various shop managers, I never made it on to their shelves.

We got down to business.

The prompts were a series of random words – green,
Thursday, sweet pea and steam train. What magic we chose to weave with the
words was up to us. There was no word limit or apparent time limit – just the
four words.

The steam train derailed me. I could work with the other
words. I’d had a conversation earlier with my ex-next door neighbour about the
conifers in my garden that were knocking down his ex-garden wall. Apparently
they were a safety hazard and best taken down. Thursday was a good day for him.
The conifers were green. Once the conifers were down I could plant sweet peas –
but the steam train didn’t seem to fit into the narrative. Just in case you are
curious as to why the ex-next door neighbour is worried about his ex-garden
wall – his daughter and son-in-law are my new neighbours and he has a grandson
he would rather not find under a pile of bricks.

I was more successful with the second set of words –
fire, rowan, April and wardrobe. I wrote a poem.

It’s a first draft. The wardrobe is the awkward word. A
poem about spring really doesn’t need a wardrobe in it. I didn’t have access to
Rhymezone.com either which limited my creativity.

I was impressed with the quality of the writing the group
produced. They had subtle nuances and imagery and layers – all the more
impressive when English was not their first language. It amazed me how with an
economy of words they had written such powerful pieces. There was enough of a
narrative to capture the imagination, but enough absence of detail for the reader
to fill in the blank spaces and reach their own conclusion. Very much “show not
tell” stuff.

I really enjoyed the evening. I enjoyed the opportunity to
write. I enjoyed the opportunity to critique the work produced. I really
enjoyed the Jaffa cakes. My intention is to go back again. I shall arm myself with
fresh fruit, or veggies and a savoury dip or something and sit as far away as
possible from the biscuit bowl as I can.